This reminds me of a batch of staple-bound books I picked up from the college library sale thirty years ago. “Pacific Rockets, The Journal of the Pacific Rocket Society”, from the late 40′s.
One of their experiments was drilling a hole through a hunk of redwood, mounting an oxygen tank on top and an igniter on the bottom, and launching it.
My collection of the journals is woefully incomplete, so I don’t know how high the wooden rocket launched, but I know that a couple of years later they had switched to plastic.

In addition to being an online editor for MAKE Magazine, Michael Colombo works in fabrication, electronics, sound design, music production and performance (Yes. All that.) In the past he has also been a childrens’ educator and entertainer, and holds a Masters degree from NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program.

The short answer is that most Cubesats will decay relatively quickly and burn up (the ones launched out of the ISS won’t last too long – the orbit is low, and even the ISS has to do an orbit correction burn pretty regularly to stay up against the slight atmospheric drag.

The authors do caution that Cubesats who are being launched as secondary payloads (IE, are being placed in the same orbit as the primary payload, like a communication satellite) should take precautions to ensure that their vehicle decays in a reasonable timeframe.